Soccer Saturday: Your Running Commentary

Saturday’s European action kicks off at Goodison Park, where Everton will take on Manchester City. The host Toffees, who were bounced from the FA Cup by relegation-threatened Wigan, are in a tight race with city rival Liverpool and West Bromwich Albion for a spot in European competition next season. Manchester City will have to shake off its woeful Everton run if it wants to put pressure on league-leading Manchester United–City has lost five out of its last seven matches against the Toffees.

Arsenal will try to stay in the hunt for a place in the Champions League when the club visits Swansea City later in the day. The Gunners, who sit five points back from fourth-place Chelsea, are coming off of a good result at Bayern Munich. Even though the 2-0 win was not enough to push Arsenal into the final eight in the Champions League, the result shows that the club still has some fight left in what will be another trophyless season.

In Germany, runaway Bundesliga leader Bayern Munich will look for revenge on third-place Bayer Leverkusen. Bayern lost 2-1 to Leverkusen at home back in October off of a late Sidney Sam goal. Since that loss, Bayern has captured 45 of 48 possible points in Bundesliga action. Will Leverkusen be able to slay the German giants twice in one season?

Saturday will close out with action from Liga MX. After falling 3-1 to Seattle Sounders FC in CONCACAF Champions League action, Tigres UANL comes home to face midtable Guadalajara. The league leaders, who are still undefeated in Clausura play, could use a good bounceback win to keep themselves at the top of the table.

If you will be watching today’s action, please feel free to share your thoughts, opinions and some play-by-play in the comments section below.

Really could have been 3-0 with that Nastasic obstruction. City look terrible without Yaya and Aguero. And when will Mancini abandon the ‘Back 3′ gamble for good? It has done much more damage than good.

The writing could be on the wall for Tim Howard. He has not been at his best this season, he just turned 34 and his deputy is performing very well in his absence.
Hopefully, Howard returns to his ever-improving domestic league after the 2014 WC at the age of 35 and with some quality years remaining in his career.

Not really with regards to Rimando being the 3…Hannehman was the 3 at the WC, Hamid was the TWO, not even the 3 ahead of Guzan at first in the JK reign, so Rimando’s been the kind of 3 (with Johnson often playing/getting the call ahead of him) for sort of a year now. But your point still stands.